Multitexture alternatives

[Neilg]

Been looking into rendering via standalone on linux and it dawned on me that every single project we do uses a good amount of multitexture.
We dont use it to swap textures usually - it's mostly in color mode in a vray comp tex and we're using either uv's or more recently triplaner to offset a huge tiling texture across the elements.

Any good alternatives to this randomization workflow which works in standalone?
We're a good way off needing to render, but the project is already underway with a few people working on assets so we need to quickly replace a few materials and set a workflow before going too far.

edit: will be using next, dont have it installed yet.

[leo.surrealismo]

have you tried vraymultisubtex?

[Vizioen]

I sometimes use the corona equivalent Corona multimap. It works with Vray although last time it made my renders crash. But I had an older version of Corona still installed this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

[Neilg]

I sometimes use the corona equivalent Corona multimap. It works with Vray although last time it made my renders crash. But I had an older version of Corona still installed this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

Something tells me that isnt going to work when rendering with vray standalone?


I didnt even know the vray multisub tex existed, but i'm not totally sure it'll work.
This is the very specific usage I am trying to re-create -
The diffuse texture is a single map, offset randomization is handled via triplanar.
The multitexture is used in color mode, to tint and to add random color variations.

From what I can see the vraymultisubtex would require us to manually enter every single color - meaning if we wanted to take a little bit of red out of it and reduce the level variation by a touch, we'd have to manually edit 10 colors instead of just one. Totally kills the point of this workflow, which is that you can scan around in the color picker and tweak the balance whenever you want & very quickly.

[Neilg]

This will work -

Put the multisub into a mix to control the range of light to dark within it's gradient, then multiplied that with a vray color to get the same level of control. It's a touch less elegant but will work in a pinch!

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

I don't know anything about osl and coding but I was just thinking that you might be able to achieve it with that... Just maybe

[Neilg]

I don't know anything about osl and coding but I was just thinking that you might be able to achieve it with that... Just maybe

Almost certainly, but that's totally out of my wheelhouse too!
An OSL random color map would be super useful.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

This will work -

Put the multisub into a mix to control the range of light to dark within it's gradient, then multiplied that with a vray color to get the same level of control. It's a touch less elegant but will work in a pinch!

That's actually was I was about to say and then saw that I didn't see your post.
you could also maybe do it with a colour correction map or gradient ramp set to map input to get the colour into the grey scale.

[squintnic]

I cant really visualise what this is doing? do you mind sharing a render of how it looks cos I reckon it would be worth looking into
Are you looking at standalone on linux due to the low cost of cloud rendering vs windows ?

[Neilg]

I cant really visualise what this is doing? do you mind sharing a render of how it looks cos I reckon it would be worth looking into
Are you looking at standalone on linux due to the low cost of cloud rendering vs windows ?

Will whip you an example up - but yeah, it's for our AWS account.

The dual E5-2666 xeon machines run $2/hr for windows images, or 50c/hr for linux... it's a huge difference. Right now we pass these costs onto our clients, but it would be nice to half that and have a healthier margin.

They just rolled out some 72-thread xeon platinum machines with 160gb ram too and they're only $1.16/hr on linux. Itching to send some jobs to those...

[squintnic]

yeah that's a massive saving.....been looking into at as well for overflow jobs. the markup on windows cloud stuff is stupid

[Neilg]

Here's the rendered version - no UV maps needed, random position, rotation, tint and color. Half my materials in scenes were set up like this, it's fast.




Switching out the gradient map colors is fun too -

[Vizioen]

I use this setup from time to time too albeit with a composite map instead. Downside is, this doesn't work for parquet textures.

[Morne]

Are you sure multitexture doesnt work?
I've been looking at some options and from the VRay Cloud docs, it says the render is based of a vrscene file. Which in turn is rendered by standalone isnt it? .....and from the docs, VRay Cloud says that multitexture is supported for CPU rendering. So my thinking then is that if it is supported, and you're rendering from a vrscene anyway then, then supposedly it will work with standalone.
Can anybody confirm?

[Vizioen]

http://cganimator.com/3dsmax-2019-osl-map/ check out a few of the osl maps that come with 3ds max 2019. I don't have access to 2019, so I can't answer but you might have a use of them > 1 of 10 and object property access combined with the independent UVW control I guess should get you there.